Quantum groups

In mathematics and theoretical physics, the term quantum group denotes various kinds of noncommutative algebras with additional structure. In general, a quantum group is some kind of Hopf algebra. There is no single, all-encompassing definition, but instead a family of broadly similar objects.

The term "quantum group" first appeared in the theory of quantum integrable systems, which was then formalized by Vladimir Drinfeld and Michio Jimbo as a particular class of Hopf algebra. The same term is also used for other Hopf algebras that deform or are close to classical Lie groups or Lie algebras, such as a `bicrossproduct' class of quantum groups introduced by Shahn Majid a little after the work of Drinfeld and Jimbo.

In Drinfeld's approach, quantum groups arise as Hopf algebras depending on an auxiliary parameter q or h, which become universal enveloping algebras of a certain Lie algebra, frequently semisimple or affine, when q = 1 or h = 0. Closely related are certain dual objects, also Hopf algebras and also called quantum groups, deforming the algebra of functions on the corresponding semisimple algebraic group or a compact Lie group.

Just as groups often appear as symmetries, quantum groups act on many other mathematical objects.. It has become fashionable to introduce the adjective quantum in cases where quantum groups act on objects. For example, there are quantum planes and quantum Grassmannians.

The discovery of quantum groups was quite unexpected, since it was known for a long time that compact groups and semisimple Lie algebras are "rigid" objects, in other words, they cannot be "deformed". One of the ideas behind quantum groups is that if we consider a structure that is in a sense equivalent but larger, namely a group algebra or a universal enveloping algebra, then a group or enveloping algebra can be "deformed", although the deformation will no longer remain a group or enveloping algebra. More precisely, deformation can be accomplished within the category of Hopf algebras that are not required to be either commutative or cocommutative. One can think of the deformed object as an algebra of functions on a "noncommutative space", in the spirit of the noncommutative geometry of Alain Connes. This intuition, however, came after particular classes of quantum groups had already proved their usefulness in the study of the quantum Yang-Baxter equation and quantum inverse scattering method developed by the Leningrad School (Ludwig Faddeev, Leon Takhtajan, Evgenii Sklyanin, Nicolai Reshetikhin and Vladimir Korepin) and related work by the Japanese School. The intuition behind the second, bicrossproduct, class of quantum groups was different and came from the search for self-dual objects as an approach to quantum gravity.

...
Wikipedia